Description:

Based on more than two years of ethnographic data with tabletop gaming communities, this talk explores how the roots of tabletop gaming foster collaboration, learning, and player agency. This work takes a cultural-historical approach to analyzing how systems shape the assumptions, identities, and experiences of their users. Focusing on how the tabletop roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons is built on a system of play that has grown and shifted over the course of 40 years, this study emphasizes the central role that systems play in mediating the experiences of participants. By focusing on depictions of gender, race, and power in Dungeons and Dragons–as a singular cultural practice–this study highlights how researchers must attend to cultural production both around and within systems.